Norway Fjords Question

[ToddWelch]

Hi there....we are looking at 2 different cruises for June 2023.  One is with MSC and is 14 days and the other is with Carnival and is 9 days.

 

MSC - leave Southampton UK and goes to Glasgow, Stornoway, 2 ports in Iceland and then Aalesund, Maloy, and Flaam in Norway then back to Southampton.

Carnival - leaves Dover and goes to Bergen, Aalesund, Molde, Olden, Cruise Nordfjord, Skjolden, Cruise Sognefjord, Haugesund and then back to Dover.

 

We love the MSC option as it goes to Scotland and Iceland and Norway, but our main concern with the MSC option versus the Carnival option relates to Fjords.  We really want to experience the Fjords where you go through them and see the high sides and the path through them.  We know with the Carnival ports we will do that with the 2 days of Cruising through the Fjords to Nordfjord and Sognefjord.....but will we miss out on this experience taking the MSC ports in Norway.  Is there an option to go through the Fjords on an excursion and get the same experience as you would on the Carnival trip.   The MSC ship is bigger and won't go through the actual Fjords like the smaller Carnival ship.

 

Any opinions or comments would be great.  Have you done either of these or both perhaps.  We sort of look at it like the Panama Canal....we just went there last year on a bigger ship that just docked on the one side and didn't go through the canal itself, but we still took a boat excursion through have the canal and came out on the pacific side and then took a bus back to the other side where the ship was.   This worked for us as we got to go through the canal and experience that.

 

Thank you in advance for your help.

 

Todd

[hallasm]

MSC has one deep fjord into Flåm, while Carnival has two fjords into Olden and Skjolden - in addition, Carnival has Bergen.  
The size of the ship has absolutely no significance for navigating these deep fjords - same experience despite size of ship.  
However, I would choose Carnival if the main thing is Norwegian fjords due to the two fjords and Bergen - but not the size.

[lucas34]

As a Finnish my vote will go to Carnival and Bergen. You can look also Sky Princess from Southampton next June with Norway and Iceland 😀